(i) Technical Field
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and method, and a non-transitory computer readable medium.
(ii) Related Art
In information processing apparatuses such as tablet terminals and personal computers, images, called “icons”, are often arranged on a screen, each of which is associated with certain software and represents the details of that software in a diagram or a picture in an easy-to-understand manner. A user performs an operation to specify this image using an input device, thereby activating the software associated with this image.
In Windows (registered trademark), which is a general operating system for personal computers, for example, images each associated with certain software are arranged in order on a screen, thereby causing a user to visually recognize software when using the software and making it easy for the user to select one from among the images.
In many cases, a user is capable of moving a specific image among these images on a screen and rearranging it at the user's desired position by performing an input operation, which is so-called “drag and drop”, for example. In the case where the images are automatically arranged in descending order at arrangement positions that are ranked and arranged in order, if a user tries to rearrange an image at a position at which another image is arranged, the position where the rearrangement operation is performed and a position at which the image is actually arranged may be different in some cases.
For example, as illustrated in FIG. 22, consider a screen on which images A to G are arranged, each of which is associated with certain software (S91). In the case where a user wishes to move and rearrange the image F, the user performs a drag operation to move the image F over the image C (S92) and gives a rearrangement instruction with a drop operation, and the image F may be moved not to the position where the image C has been arranged, but to the position where the image D has been arranged (S93). It is considered that, as illustrated in FIG. 23, in order to arrange the image F to the position where the image C has been arranged, it is necessary to arrange the image F between the images B and C. To do so, it is necessary for the user to perform a drop operation in an area including the space between the images B and C, such as that illustrated by an arrangement area 901. However, such an operation in image rearrangement sometimes ends in a result different from what is intended by the user.